


Through Shadows Falling

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Series: Strawberry [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Families of Choice, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Ice Cream, Sibling Bonding, Spoilers, Stranger Things Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 23:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19631917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: Healing is a slow, painful process. Will helps El through it. Or maybe it’s the other way around.It should be awkward. And oh, it is awkward, definitely, but not for the reasons Will thought it would be.





	Through Shadows Falling

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR SPOILERS. I finished all of it in one night so don’t read it you haven’t watched it! I loved season 3. I can feel it consuming my brain. I have so many thoughts oh my goodness. 
> 
> Warnings: Follows canon entirely, so grief and swearing and nightmares are involved. But it’s actually pretty tame and very soft. No romance! Although Mike is mentioned quite a bit! 
> 
> Title from a lyric in the song, Into The West!

The new house is cramped. Not small, but cramped. Hardly a surprise with four people inside that won’t step too hard on the fragile ground or speak louder than necessary; any house dealing with that would feel cramped when it isn’t empty. 

Will liked the old house. He liked home. He liked his room full of comics and socks and crayons worn down to stubs. He liked the table where they ate a very small turkey every Thanksgiving, where he drew pictures and mom promised to buy him more colours. He liked the living room, where the TV blared with soft static and bad comedy shows, and the safe four walls of Jonathan’s room where the music was always pounding. Will liked home, in Hawkins. 

But then Will was snatched in his own shed, mom strung lights all over the ceiling, and the wall came crashing down. The water ran too hot, the bathtub leered at him, and the Demodog was crammed in their fridge. The same fridge where the magnets came loose months and months later, in the same kitchen where Will proclaimed love to be gross, in the same house that couldn’t feel like home because the people that called it home kept coming back half-dead or not coming back at all. 

So yeah, Will liked his home in Hawkins, and the new house is cramped, grief taking up every inch of spare room, and he doesn’t know how to talk to El. It’s all very wrong and unusual. But it is still a thousand times better than if they had stayed.

* * *

“Go and talk to her,” mom says, like it’s that easy. She says it with her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, though, and her hair is in disarray, so Will goes. He stands on the stairway for a minute and a half before sighing at himself. El’s door is on the top floor with two other bedrooms, and he hovers there too before he can bring himself to knock.

It’s already open. Just a crack, just a few inches. But Will averts his eyes and knocks anyway. 

“Hi,” Will says, when El peers at him through the door. “Mom said… well, she said you can go outside now. That you don’t have to stay in here. And it’s nice out, so I thought you… you might want to go for a walk?”

He didn’t think that at all. That’s not what he meant to say. But even though they used to be friends before, it’s awkward now. Maybe because there’s no Mike between them, and Will never got to know her without Mike at her side. The reverse is probably true, he realises. 

“A walk,” El repeats, before shrugging. She sweeps her hair back into a ponytail and buttons up her crinkled shirt. One of Hopper’s. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Will blinks, nodding. “Great!” 

They stand there for a minute, the open doorway between them. El raises her eyebrow, and that’s totally a Lucas-look, which is unfair, but it still kick-starts something in him. 

“Oh, I should…”

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, then starts walking. He thinks he hears a soft noise—not quite a laugh, no, but he decides to count it as a victory anyway.

* * *

It should be awkward. And oh, it is awkward, definitely, but not for the reasons Will thought it would be.

It should be awkward because there’s no Mike here to bridge the gap between them, but slowly they build their own instead, and that’s no longer a problem. El is… still El without Mike there. Maybe _more_ El without Mike there, which is probably unfair to think but still rings true. 

They get ice cream whenever there’s enough sun in the sky to justify it. They walk to the ice cream truck and then to the bench nearby and they sit and watch the birds or the sun or kids on their rollerblades. Will gets the same thing every time, a strawberry ice cream cone, and eats it diligently, if a little messily. El works her way through the menu with furrowed brows until she lands on some kind of lolly that she likes, three weeks in, with all different fruit flavours. She gets sticky down to her elbows when the juice melts, which is both gross and familiar. 

“It’s good,” El says, taking a happy bite. 

Then a shadow passes over her face, and her smile grows wobbly. 

Will panics. He’s not ashamed to say it, though he probably should be: he flat-out _panics._ This has been happening a lot lately, and it’s the reason things are so awkward, because Will keeps trampling on eggshells that he didn’t know were on the ground. He keeps making El sad and it’s awful, even if he knows objectively that it’s not actually him making her sad. He heard mom tell Jonathan that it was bound to happen, but that doesn’t mean he’s ever prepared for it. She hears a song that makes her bob her head, and when her head suddenly stills, there’s a shadow. She laughs at a joke, and in the guilty quiet that follows, there’s a shadow. She takes a bite of something she likes, and when the taste settles, there’s a shadow. 

Mom calls the shadow grief. Jonathan muttered something about trauma. Will thinks it could be memories.

“Uh,” he says, when the half-eaten lolly droops in El’s hand. “Have you ever had brainfreeze?”

The shadow recedes slightly. El looks at him, confused. 

“When you eat something really cold, it’s like your brain can’t deal with it,” Will explains, far less eloquently than he usually would, with a lack of science that would disappoint all his friends. “Your brain freezes up, and it’s so cold and you make a weird face sometimes. A few summers ago, Mike and I were eating ice cream at my house, and he got brainfreeze.”

El perks up at the sound of Mike’s name, just like Will knew she would. It should make him bitter, really, or angry, or hurt, but it doesn’t. It can’t. Not when she’s—they’ve all lost so much, and he can’t bring himself to begrudge anyone the things they’ve managed to find in the face of that loss. 

“What happened?” El asks eagerly, shifting closer on the park bench. Her arm brushes his, and it’s warm and comforting. The shadow drifts further away.

“He took a big bite of ice cream, and it froze his brain, and his face got all like this.” Will screws his face up in the most ridiculous expression he’s capable of, and he’s gratified to hear a laugh bubble out of El. “Then he dropped his ice cream all over his socks, and he had to bike home in just his shoes. He called me afterwards just to tell me how sweaty his feet were.”

El wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

“Yeah,” Will says, watching as more juice dribbles down her arms. “Mike really is gross. You make a good pair.”

It takes her a moment, but when she gets it she pushes Will just enough to unearth him from the bench, both of them laughing. He stumbles to his feet, grinning, and slurps his ice cream up noisily. 

“Gross,” she insists again, before biting harshly down on her lolly, strangely determined. “Come on. Let’s get brainfreeze.”

Neither of them are strangers to ice or cold water, and brainfreeze hurts even if it hurts less than monsters and shadows. But El wants to try every new thing in the world, and Will wants to keep her shadows at bay, so he bites down too and doesn’t regret it.

* * *

Something thumps against the wall, and Will startles. He drops his book. Not a comic book because he gave half of those to his friends and shoved the rest in a donation box, because he’s supposed to be growing up, right? Except right now he really just wants to read about Wolverine for a bit.

There’s another thump, and Will flinches at the sound, but it’s a fairly common experience. He still slips off the desk chair and puts the book down, shuffling awkwardly out of his room and over to El’s. He knocks on the open door. 

El opens it fully with a scowl already in place. “I don't want to go for a walk.”

“It’s raining anyway,” Will says, even though it slowed to a drizzle half an hour ago. “What are you doing?”

She disappears back inside her room. But the door stays wide open, and he inches forward because it feels like an invitation even if it’s not spoken aloud. There’s a bed pushes up against one wall, and fairy lights covering the window, and strange knick-knacks on the shabby dresser. A soft rug and a handful of photos that Jonathan developed for her. This is a girl’s room, Will realises belatedly, feeling uneasy for a number of reasons. He glances around wildly. There could be anything in here. 

“You can sit down,” she offers, less mad but still pissed off, if Will had to guess. Her attention isn’t on him though. There are teddy bears and cushions and rolled-up cardigans in a lump by the wall between their rooms. Will sinks into her squeaky desk chair and tries to avoid the picture of Mike taped to the wall over the desk. Tries to. Mike looks mostly disgusted, but that might be because Jonathan is clearly the one taking the picture. There’s a blur in the background that might be Nancy, but Mike’s face fills the photo. Will looks for an aching five seconds, and then turns away. 

El has a cardigan in her hands, and is staring at it with a ferocity that scares him. A familiar ferocity. 

“You’re practicing,” Will says, lightbulb flickering on over his head. “I thought you…”

_Didn't have your powers anymore._

That’s what mom said. She also said that might be a good thing, that it might give El a chance to live a normal life as an ordinary girl. Will has his doubts. He’s not sure someone who’s had to do what El’s done can ever call herself an ordinary girl. 

He wants her to have a normal life. But it seems unfair that she shouldn’t get to choose it on her own terms, that it’s taken out of her hands. It doesn’t feel right, to tell her not to practice, to take what she’s been given when all she’s been given is an unfair hand. 

El growls low in her throat and throws the cardigan at the wall. It slumps on the ground and stays there among the other failed attempts. 

If Will had something that could keep him safe from Mindflayers and Demigorgons, something that could make him just as strong as the bad guys, something that he could use to fight back, and then it was _gone,_ then he’d want it back too. He thinks mom has a point. But he also thinks El should get to have a point too, and nobody’s asking her what she wants. 

“D’you want some help?” Will offers, leaning down to pick up a cushion. “I’ll throw…”

El turns on her heel, staring at him. It takes an anxious minute where Will works up to an apology, and then her face lights up with a small, determined grin. “And I’ll catch.”

* * *

“No,” Jonathan says, when he sees them coming along the bowling alley.

“Please?” Will asks. El clasps her hands together, doe-eyed, just like they practiced. 

Jonathan eyes them warily before sighing deeply. “Fine, you can have alley two. But I swear I’ll pretend I don’t know you if you break something.” 

He stomps off to get their shoes, muttering about calling Harrington, and they high-five behind his back.

* * *

Cabbage isn’t Will’s favourite food, but he eats it anyway. Mom looks haggard but a bit better than last week, and she kisses his forehead when she rushes past to find her keys.

“She has the night shift?” El asks, watching mom overturn the couch cushions. 

Will nods, but mom hears them. 

“I’ll be back in time to cook breakfast,” mom promises, still half-buried in the couch. She unearths the keys with a triumphant cry just as Jonathan goes sprinting through the room, camera held aloft, tie askew. He’s out the door before anyone can say much more than a mumbled greeting. 

“Jonathan!” mom yells, but the door remains shut. Will stuffs the last of his vegetables into his mouth and nudges El’s ankle under the table. She looks surprised at the touch, and then surprised at the state of her own plate, as though she’d forgotten it was there. 

“Right, I have to go,” mom says, striding back to the table and fixing them both with a nervous smile. “Your brother’s got a shift at the bowling alley, but he’ll be home in two hours. Two hours, okay? Will you be okay until then, because I can get someone to cover for me if not, but we—“

“We’ll be okay,” El interrupts, before the words are halfway out of Will’s mouth. He freezes, wondering what he’s supposed to do. It’s usually his place to do that, to reassure his mom that he can manage, that she doesn’t have to feel guilty for putting a roof over their heads. 

Mom wrings her hands. “Are you sure?”

El nods decisively. “Very sure. Go and fix people.”

Mom laughs, and Will grins around his fork. She’s not a doctor or a nurse, but the training will get her there eventually. He likes how El says it, like there’s no doubt that mom’s the one saving people. Putting them back together. It’s nice to have back-up for this, he decides. Nice to have someone else to make him mom laugh when she’s worried. 

“There aren’t any screwdrivers involved, but I’ll try my best,” mom promises. She hesitates, and then presses a kiss to El’s forehead too, before doing the same to Will again. She calls out the usual spiel as she heads for the front door, but Will is too busy watching the shadow crawl across El’s tremulously happy face. 

He thought it was a memory. Jonathan thought it was trauma. Mom thought it was grief. 

He doesn’t see why they can’t all have the right answer. 

“She cares about you,” Will says, softly, after the door’s shut. “We all do.”

“I care too.”

“That’s okay, you know,” Will says, stirring his fork through the last of the gravy. It’s bad gravy, but he doesn’t mind. When he looks up, El has a question in her eyes, so he answers it. “Every time you find something good or happy, you stop yourself. I get it, but… it’s okay. Just because you feel happy doesn’t mean you don't miss him.”

El’s grip on her fork grows very very tight, and she stops breathing. Will flinches. Shit, shit, shit, this is why he doesn’t say things, this is why he’s supposed to stay quiet and not talk because he ruins things, he oversteps, he’s never got the right words for this shit and how’s he supposed to know how to deal with it all, he’s just a child and El needs…

There’s a flurry of movement, and when Will blinks, he’s wrapped in a hug. He blinks again, and the hug is still happening. Okay. People don't—girls don't hug him, and Will is _so_ alright with that, but this is El and she’s family, so it’s different. It’s different, and it doesn’t have to be awkward, and it feels right. 

“Thank you,” El breathes. 

Will hugs her back. Maybe this is exactly what El needs.

* * *

“Read this to me,” El hisses, turning on the lantern by his bed. She leaves the door open just a crack.

Will lies there, chest heaving, cold sweat gathering on his skin. He remembers shadows and something in his mind, in his neck, something that wasn’t him. But the light is fierce even though it’s dull. 

“Will,” El says, sharp and soft. She climbs into the bed and pressed a copy of Wonder Woman to his chest. “You’re safe. Read this to me.” 

“Okay,” Will says, feeling his pulse slow in his throat. El is a comfortable weight at his side, a warm presence. The light helps. El helps. 

“Okay,” he says, calmer, and picks up the comic with shaking fingers. El curls up beside him. The door stays open and the light stays on. 

Will clears his throat as his shadows fade. 

Maybe this is what they both need.

* * *

“You have bad taste in ice cream.”

Will snags his ice cream cone from her loose grip and rolls his eyes. “I didn't ask you to steal it. God, you’re as bad as Dustin.”

El licks the last of the strawberry of her mouth and watches a bird hop closer. Their new neighbourhood is fairly small, and the birds like to gather around this one bench that they’ve deemed as theirs. Birds are a bad omen, usually, but so far nothing bad’s happened. 

“You haven’t called them as much as they would like,” El says, putting the words together carefully. She still does that, sometimes. But she’s so much faster and better now. Will thinks she could write stories if she wanted to. Comics about powerful girls. 

“Yeah, I know.” Will breaks off a piece of cone and throws it at a bad omen. “I’m just getting used to things. Giving them space.”

“That is a mistake,” El says gravely.

“Probably.” 

“No. _That_ is a mistake.” 

“Oh, shit!”

They run, giggling, from a flock of hungry birds, and Will ends up dropping his ice cream in the road. “It tasted bad anyway,” is El’s only response, but she lets him have some of her popcorn when they curl up to watch TV later. 

He sneaks away during a commercial and dials an old number, unable to stop laughing when Dustin’s vengeful threats roar down the phone. He promises to call more. El puts her thumb up in the air over the back of the sofa.

* * *

It’s not all better. It doesn’t stop being awkward all the time, but there are more hugs, more walks, and the promise of school on the horizon. Proper school for El, and back to school for Will. When Jonathan comes home late from the bowling alley, he brings popcorn and ruffles both their hair before stealing the phone to talk to Nancy. They make kissy faces at him the whole time until he threatens to swap their sneakers out for bowling shoes. Mom is a whirlwind, and Will can see how much she’s grieving and hurting, but every time she settles with him at the table and prods fun at his drawings, every time he catches her stroking El’s hair while they talk quietly about things not meant for him, he knows she’ll be okay.

It’s how he knows what to do, the day that El asks him for help. 

The teddy bear does not stay in the air. It rises up, then sinks to the floor with a thud. Will sighs, reaching over for another cushion, but the sound of a fist hitting a bedpost makes him flinch back in surprise. 

“I can’t do it,” El cries, her hands clenched tightly. “Why can’t I do it?”

The teddy bear sits forlornly in the middle of the room. 

“I don't know,” Will says, hesitating. “You couldn’t always do it. Could you?”

On the bed, El sags against the wall. She’s been sat up there for twenty minutes now, while Will sprawls on the floor and flings soft things into the air for her to catch. Nothing breakable, except for a remote that snuck into the pile somehow. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says. Her voice is tired and trembling. There is a stain on her too-big shirt and a small cut on her chin from where she tripped yesterday, on the driveway outside. Jonathan had scooped her up, panicking, and stormed inside to tend the wound, which was no bigger than an inch. Will had trailed after them, lost for words. 

He’s only seen Jonathan behave like that for a small number of people before. It’s nice, sure, but it’s also weird. From the look on El’s face when he settled her on the couch, she’d thought so too. 

“Mom said you need to heal,” Will suggests. “Maybe it won’t come back until you feel better?”

_“How?”_

That’s not a plea that Will feels qualified to answer. It’s a very broken sort of demand, from someone who clearly doesn’t expect an answer but desperately wants one anyway. 

“How?” El demands again, tears leaking from her eyes. “How do I feel better? It hurts all the time and I miss him. I know how to _be_ better.” She points at the teddy bear on the floor, sending Will’s stomach swooping through the floor. “I know how to _do_ better.” She points again. “But how do I feel better?”

At this, her hand drops, and her tears fall silently. 

Will’s been asking himself something similar since the night things went so wrong. How do you feel better, inside? How do you feel normal, unafraid, how do you stop worrying and panicking and how do you stop the dread and hurt from drowning you? How do you feel better when so much has gone wrong?

“Mom said that time is a better healer than most doctors.” Swallowing, Will stands up and dusts off his shorts. He walks to the bed, picking up the teddy bear on the way and settling on the edge. “I think that’s… bullshit.”

El meets his eyes, both startled and fiercely expectant. “Yeah?”

“When I was in the upside down, it didn't matter how much time passed. I didn't get used to it, or feel safer or better just because I knew what was coming.” Will plays with the loose button on the teddy bear’s faded waistcoat. “When he _had_ me, when he used me as a… a host--I didn't feel better afterwards, just because there was more time between being his host and being free of him. I still don't always feel better. But I… I know what helps.”

El’s hand finds his, her fist unclenching so she can grab his fingers and hold them. She’s not careful. Not the way most people are when they touch him, like they’ll catch something or he’ll crumble. She holds him tightly, like she knows he’s strong enough to handle the bruises. 

“What helps?” she asks, softer but still fierce. She looks like she’s breaking, but she’s not. Will knows she’s not. 

Swallowing again, Will offers her a weak smile. “People. Friends like Lucas and Dustin and Max. And boyfriends, like Mike. And family. I know you keep losing your family, but whatever you have left of them--you have to let that make you feel better. And you have us too now. We can be your family too.”

El closes her eyes, tears squeezing past her lids and falling down her cheeks. Will puts the teddy bear in her free hand and keeps holding her other one. 

“Time won’t make it better on its own,” Will says. “But the people you spend that time with… they help.”

They sit quietly. El smiles a bit even though she’s crying, and Will tries not to panic. He keeps holding her hand, and she clutches the teddy bear close. They lean against the wall, feet hanging over the edge of the bed, and Will hums an old song. 

_Should I stay or should I go now?_

“So,” El says, when the last of the tears have fallen, and they’ve been quiet for a while. Her cheeks are still damp and shiny, but her eyes are shining with an old sort of happiness, the kind he saw when they were kind-of-friends before. Her eyebrow tips up, and her smile is exhausted but a little cheeky. 

“So,” Will echoes warily. 

El giggles, eyebrow tipping up further. “Boyfriends like Mike, huh?”

There is a brief wrestle for the teddy bear, because Will has fought many a pillow war with Jonathan and he has the upper hand here, okay, but El has never needed her powers to be stronger than the rest of the world. He thinks, as he lies there and giggles with her, cheeks dark with some forgotten childish feeling, that he’s alright with losing the fight, just this once. 

_Should I stay or should I go now?_

For once, the answer is easy. This may not be Hawkins or the house that felt big enough for four people and their grief, but the people inside make it his home, and home is where Will always fights to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Speaketh to me!! <3


End file.
